What Is C2 Security?

C2 security is generally described as discretionary access security. Many C2 features will seem obvious. Here are a few of the requirements of a C2-evaluated product:

• Each user must have a unique logon ID and a password, which they must enter before they can access the system. The user's logon ID and password must be protected from capture or eavesdropping.
• The Windows NT logon dialog initiation keyboard sequence (Ctrl+Alt+Del) is the first line of defense against Trojan Horse programs that seek to steal a user's ID and password.
• Users are completely accountable for all their actions and the actions of the processes that they initiate.
• The system must provide auditing of any user's or process's attempt to access, read, write, or delete any object.
• The owner of a resource or object can grant access to other users or groups of users. (This is what is meant by discretionary access, which is at the discretion of the object owner.) However, the default access to any object is always no access.
• Objects that have been deleted cannot be reused. This is why deleted files on NTFS (New Technology File System) volumes cannot be recovered. A file server would not be very secure if someone, even an administrator, could recover deleted files that they did not own. Consider deleted payroll records as an example.
• Objects in memory are protected from unauthorized access. Memory is reinitialized before it can be reused. Because of this, memory objects that are deallocated cannot be accessed by another user or process.
• Administrators do not have access privileges to files that they do not own. If an administrator takes ownership of an object, the original owner will know it.